This course surveys syntactic phenomena and variation among Austronesian languages, including Formosan, Philippine, Indonesian, and Oceanic languages. A wide variety of phenomena will be examined, with special attention being given to the well-studied topics of word order and voice/alignment. This course will also consider how diachronic change accounts for syntactic variation among Austronesian languages.

This course will consider select topics in the syntax of Bantu languages with an emphasis on the relationship between morphological phenomena such as agreement and syntactic phenomena such as argument structure and information structure relations in the clause. Formal, descriptive, and typological perspectives will be considered and readings will draw on a range of theoretical traditions that have been applied to the study of Bantu languages. A brief introduction to the comparative Bantu linguistics will also be provided in order to provide context for the data to be discussed.

This course will survey the most influential research in Variationist Sociolinguistics focusing on theory, analysis and interpretation. Several case studies from different levels of grammar will be used to demonstrate how language change can be usefully studied in time, space and social context. We will also consider methodological and statistical modeling techniques used to analyze linguistic change, including the comparative sociolinguistic approach. What questions arise? Where can current research be pushed forward and how?